HOUSTON — If you’re an American League contender, and you’re thinking about adding Marco Estrada at the trade deadline to bolster your rotation for the stretch drive and post-season, you’d probably like to know how well he can do against the Houston Astros.
After all, the defending World Series champion boasts MLB’s most prolific offence, coming into Wednesday’s action leading baseball in statistics both traditional, such as runs (419) and batting average (.265), and contemporary, like wRC+ (117) and offensive WAR (16.3). Every day, Houston manager A.J. Hinch pencils five players into his batting order with an OPS above .800. The only position at which Astros hitters have a wRC+ south of 100 is centre field — and even that’s only a hair below at 96.
Simply put: Houston’s office is really, really good. And if you’re hoping to make any noise in the American League playoffs, chances are you’ll have to figure out a way to contain it.
J.A. Happ — one of the best starting pitchers available ahead of next month’s non-waiver trade deadline — gave a decent audition to curious clubs Monday, holding the Astros to three runs over six innings of work. Wednesday, it was Estrada’s turn.
The results can best be described as mixed. Estrada got tagged early, settled in for a while, and then got hurt again late, as he surrendered four runs (three earned) over five innings of work in a 7-6 Blue Jays loss. Kevin Pillar and Aledmys Diaz each had three-hit afternoons, while the game was lost in the ninth when Alex Bregman drove an 0-2 Ryan Tepera fastball 398 feet over the wall in left for a two-run, walk-off shot.
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“That game right there kind of sums up our year to this point, to be honest with you,” said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons. “That’s disappointing. When you’ve got the good teams right there, you’ve got to beat them.”
But back to Estrada. By the time he threw his first pitch Wednesday, the soon-to-be 35-year-old already had a five-run cushion, after Toronto ambushed Astros starter Dallas Keuchel with a bat-around first inning. It had to be a foreign feeling considering the Blue Jays had scored two runs or less in seven of Estrada’s last nine starts.
And perhaps waiting patiently for the Blue Jays to finish scoring affected him, as Estrada promptly handed three runs back to the Astros in a rocky first inning of his own. It wasn’t all his fault, though, as Estrada was forced to get four outs in the inning after Houston’s leadoff hitter, George Springer, ended up at first base following a weak pop-up due to catcher’s interference.
Estrada retired two of his next three batters, but Evan Gattis and Josh Reddick each came up with big two-out hits, driving in three. Since MLB’s official rules don’t consider catcher’s interference an error, two of the three runs ended up counting against Estrada’s ERA.
“Obviously, that was a rough first,” Estrada said. “Unfortunately, we had that catcher’s interference that cost an out. But it’s my job to pick him up and get the next few guys out. Unfortunately, I made some bad pitches and they got hit a long way. It shouldn’t have happened. I should have gotten out of the inning and made better pitches.”
Estrada settled in from there, retiring six of his next seven, and escaping a two-on, two-out jam in the fourth. But he allowed a leadoff double to Bregman in the fifth, which came around to score on a two-out, two-strike double by Gattis later in the inning. Estrada retired his next batter on three pitches, but did not return for the sixth.
“We all know they have a good lineup,” Estrada said. “But if you make your pitches, you can be successful against any lineup, it doesn’t matter who it is. I didn’t locate as well as I wanted to. Gave up a few hits. But, still, I didn’t really feel in any danger. I just made bad pitches when I needed to make some good ones and gave up a few runs because of it.”
Factoring in Wednesday’s outing, Estrada now has a 2.35 ERA over his last five starts, which suggests he could be an interesting trade candidate as the July 31 deadline approaches. There could be as many as 10 teams looking for starting pitching in the coming weeks. And beyond the top of the known market — Happ, Cole Hamels, Tyson Ross — the drop-off is steep.
Estrada would fit nicely at the back end of many rotations, or even in the bullpen where he has experience from earlier in his career. And while he’s not quite the dependable commodity Happ is, Estrada has pieced together a fine month of June, throwing quality starts in four of his five outings. He struck out 27 over 30.2 June innings, while walking only seven. He’s been looking much more like the pitcher who put up a 3.30 ERA across the 2015 and ’16 seasons than the one who came in Wednesday with a 4.83 ERA over 48 starts since the beginning of 2017.
With the Blue Jays clearly poised to be deadline sellers, Estrada a free agent come season’s end, and intriguing young arms like Ryan Borucki and Sean Reid-Foley available to fill Blue Jays rotation spots over the back-half of the season, it makes a great deal of sense that Toronto’s front office would be looking to see if it can supplement its minor-league system by trading Estrada this July.
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After Wednesday, American League contenders have a better idea of what he can do against baseball’s best offence. But another school of thought is that the best destination for Estrada would actually be MLB’s senior circuit.
American League clubs may simply know him too well. For as effective as Estrada is, he’s essentially a two-pitch pitcher. While he’ll feature a cutter and curveball intermittently throughout his starts, he’s still throwing either a fastball or a change-up 86.5 per cent of the time this season. In other words, the book’s out.
So, if you traded Estrada to the National League, where hitters would still have that same abstract information on paper but not the concrete information of actually seeing Estrada’s pitches up close, you’d theoretically be putting him in a more favourable position to succeed.
When he struggled in 2017, Estrada ruminated about becoming too predictable and telegraphing his pitches. He felt his arm speed and mechanics were giving hitters a hint as to what was coming. In today’s game, with teams meticulously studying video of opposing pitchers, it’s difficult to get away with something like that. Especially when you’re facing the same lineups over and over.
A move to the NL would at least give Estrada the benefit of unfamiliarity, and it’s worth noting that he threw 6.2 shutout innings against the Washington Nationals just two weeks ago.
The Blue Jays could make Estrada even more attractive to potential suitors by eating the approximately $6.5 million remaining on his 2018 contract, and perhaps even taking on salary in return. That’s what happened last July, when Toronto flipped Francisco Liriano to the Astros for then-prospect Teoscar Hernandez and Nori Aoki’s $5.5-million contract.
It’s tricky business comparing the market at one trade deadline to another. But it’s worth nothing Liriano’s ERA at the time of that trade was 5.88. After Wednesday’s outing, Estrada’s is 4.53. It’s not hard to make a case that 2018 Estrada is a better commodity than 2017 Liriano was.
At the very least, it’s something to keep an eye on as MLB’s summer trade season heats up.